Student-led appraisal of marks

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Description/Abstract

Student progression through an academic year is often full of questions regarding the relative level of achievement in continuous appraisal compared with end-of-year exams. In-course assessment marks are distributed to students during the year but many students do not know how their performance in the in-course assessment affects the score required to pass the year.

In line with future curriculum developments that will allow students to include or exclude in-course assessment marks in their final examination score, we have developed an innovative new system to enable students to not only view their continuous assessment marks for the entire year on the web, but also to see how these marks contribute to their final exam grades. This will indicate how many marks must be potentially attained in their final exam to pass. Areas of weakness are clearly visible and the effect these weaknesses have on the overall outcome will be shown.

The student-led appraisal of marks (SLAM) system is currently being used for the 2nd year Medical Neuroscience course. Students can view their marks for timed essays, spot tests, tutorial attendance and practical assessments on-line. Using an active server page interface to a relational database backend running on Internet Information Services, students log in to the system using their email address and candidate number. In-course assessment marks are added to the database as they are released, allowing a cumulative total of marks to be viewed throughout the year. By the time the students are revising for their end-of-year exams their grade record for the whole year is available on-line.

The weightings of these in-course assessment marks are taken into account when the system calculates what percentage the student must score in their final exam to attain a pass, merit or distinction. Assessment titles are displayed along with the maximum mark attainable as well as the marks that the student has obtained for each one. When these marks are passed through the calculation algorithm the percentages that must be achieved in the final exam are shown for the different grade levels. Individual assessment marks may be de-selected, meaning that they are not included in the grade calculations. The effect of including each unit in the final assessment can be seen.

Over 900 'hits' on the system have been made by 2nd year medical students (350 students), indicating multiple repeat visitors. Although this system is currently running on an informative basis at the moment, it is hoped that in the future, students will actively use this system to determine which in-course assessment marks to include or exclude before final examinations are taken and to register these preferences on-line.